Ontology and Agent based Approach for Knowledge Management Defense of PhD Thesis Michal Laclavík Supervisor: Ing. Ladislav Hluchý PhD. Dear Charman, Commission members, reviewers, guests

Outline Motivation State of the Art Objectives Methodology and Tools Agent Knowledge Model – Models, Methodology, Library Experience Management Applications Conclusion Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Motivation and State of the Art MAS is powerful paradigm for distributed or heterogeneous systems MAS need Knowledge Support and Semantics MAS need Connection with Existing Commercial Standards Agent Technology Roadmap: Current MAS Systems – lack of Internal Agent Knowledge Model, lack of interconnection with semantic web results (knowledge model representations) and commercial standards Focus on Agents and Knowledge representation (Ontologies) Knowledge Management and Experience Management as application domains Bratislava, 12th January 2006

State of the Art - Agents Agent Definition: An agent is a computer system capable of flexible autonomous action in a dynamic, unpredictable and open environment. (LUCK 2003) MAS Standards: FIPA, MASIF Related to agent communication, agent platforms No standards for internal agent knowledge model with available implementations Bratislava, 12th January 2006

State of the Art - Agents Architectures: Reactive Architecture No specification of knowledge model, behavior of agent is based on implemented responses to environment states Belief Desire Intention Architecture – BDI Belief – represents knowledge model, available some implementations based on logic programming, not used in FIPA compliant MAS Behavioral Architecture FIPA compliant MAS are based on such architecture No specification of Internal Agent Knowledge model – depend on agent designer and developer JADE Agent System Support for ontologies based on FIPA-SL (Similar to First Order Logic) No Query engine No Storage No Inference Bratislava, 12th January 2006

State of the Art – Ontologies, Knowledge Characters Data Information Knowledge Actions Syntax Semantics Pragmatics Reasoning (Bergman, 2002, Experience Management) Ontologies Knowledge Representation OWL-DL compatible with Description Logic Query and Storage Engines available RDF, OWL, RDQL based Application domain Knowledge Management (KM) is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets (Source: CIO Magazine) Experience Management is special kind of KM – based on “lessons learned” Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Problem Specification Graphical User Interface User requests Displaying results Multi Agent System External System Agent 1 Agent 2 Agent 3 XML, XML-RPC, SOAP IIOP, HTTP, SMTP ACL KM FIPA ACL, KIF, FIPA-SL, FIPA-RDF Knowledge Model FIPA ACL, RDF/OWL, RDQL Knowledge Base Knowledge Storage Querying Directory Facilitator Bratislava, 12th January 2006

State of The Art Conclusion Focus on software, intelligent and FIPA compliant agents Providing better semantic infrastructure (ontologies, knowledge models) Apply basic principles of software and knowledge engineering Make stronger connection between MAS and existing commercial technologies Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Thesis Objectives Design of Agent Architecture using Ontology based Knowledge Model Design of Software Development Methodology for creation of Agents with Ontology based Knowledge Model Design of Generic Ontology Model for Experience Management with extension to different application domains. Design & Development of Software Library for building Intelligent Agents with Ontology Knowledge Model with possibility to plug agents to existing commercial technologies Design and Development of user friendly Knowledge Presentation. Evaluation of Results on real pilot operation. Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Used Methods and Methodologies Knowledge management, system design Unified Modeling Language – UML CommonKADS, MAScommonKADS Protégé as Tool for CommonKADS Formal methods for describing ontology based models Description Logic Graph Ontology representation Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Used Tools and Software Protégé Ontology Editor Support for OWL ontology format Can be used as modeling tool JADE (Java Agent DEvelopment Framework) Most developing MAS framework Compliant with FIPA standards Jena – Semantic Web Framework for Java Support for OWL – best available OWL API Support for RDQL model querying Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Agent Knowledge Model Objective: Design of Agent Architecture using Ontology based Knowledge Model

Agent Knowledge Model Based on Events, Resources, Actions, Actors, Context Formally Described using Sets, Description Logic (compatible with OWL-DL), Graph Representation Actor Context updating function/algorithm (Actor Environment State) CAnew = fC(ea,CAold) Resources updating function/algorithm (result of fulfilled actor goals) RAnew = fR(CAnew,RAold) Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Software Development Methodology Objective: Design of Software Development Methodology for creation of Agents with Ontology based Knowledge Model

Development Methodology (Knowledge Model) Extending Model with Protégé Editor following CommonKADS models Organizational or Environment Model Task Model Agent or Actor Model Includes implementation of algorithms for context and resource updating Results Ontology developed in Protégé which can be exported in OWL format. Concrete Algorithms for each actor (often algorithms are similar or same) which updates actors' context CAnew and resources RAnew. Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Development Methodology (System Design) UML Diagrams for concrete Application Domain Use Case Diagram for each agent agent is taken as system boundaries Sequence Diagram Communication among agents Class Diagram Behaviors are described as methods Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Agent Software Library Objectives: Design of Agent Architecture using Ontology based Knowledge Model Design & Development of Software Library for building Intelligent Agents with Ontology Knowledge Model with possibility to plug agents to existing commercial technologies

Agent Software Library Support for OWL based Agent Knowledge Model Support for XML-RPC connection to receive event and send plain XML Support for agent communication using FIPA ACL with OWL and RDQL as content languages Support for Presentation of Ontological Knowledge (RDF/OWL => plain XML + XSL => HTML) JADE and Jena Integration Available on JADE official website to MAS community Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Agent Library Example Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Support for Knowledge and Experience Management Objective: Design of Generic Ontology Model for Experience Management with extension to different application domains.

Extension of Model for Experience Management Extended Agent Memory Model Workflow Related WfInstance, WfActivity ActiveHint Sub class of resource Representation of Experience Employee Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Algorithms for EM Extension Actor (Employee) Context updating algorithm CAnew = fC(ea,CAold) Resources (Active Hint) updating algorithm RAnew = fR(CAnew,RAold) Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Complexity of algorithms All depends also on Active Hints Templates count – this does not grow too fast. 1st Case: Constant – final count of context elements (1-6) 2nd Case: O(n) – based on resource/event count in Memory 3rd Case: O(n2) – based on 2 loops: events/resources, similar resources experimental solution because algorithm used other software e.g. Jena with RDQL – it was hard to prove complexity different way. Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Resource Similarity (3rd Case) Similarity of Ontology Individuals Weighted matching of properties Similar to CBR algorithm Weighted Euclidian Distance sim({res1,res2}) = fsim( "{propi} º propertyi.Resource({res1}) Ç "{propj} º propertyj.Resource({res2}) Ç {propi} º {propj} Ç {propi} Î DomainClass Ç DomainClass Í Domain Ç ${simWeight} Î SimilarityWeight Ç domainClass.SimilarityWeight( DomainClass) Î {simWeight} Ç {weight} º weight .SimilarityWeight( DomainClass) Î {simWeight}; Sij{weight}/n ) Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Presentation of Ontology based Knowledge Objective: Design and Development of user friendly Knowledge Presentation.

Presentation of Ontology based Knowledge Ontology Tree Browse window Graph XSL Transformation RDF/OWL => Plain XML + XSL => HTML Infrastructure to receive plain XML using XML-RPC Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Objective: Evaluation of Results on real pilot operation. Applications Objective: Evaluation of Results on real pilot operation.

Pellucid 5FP IST Project Pellucid Architecture Title: Platform for Organizationally Mobile Public Employees Duration: Sep 2002- Dec 2004 Knowledge Management to support employees Workflow based Administration Processes To support Employee Mobility in organization Agent Architecture based on autonomous co-operating agents Pellucid Agents Process Layer Interaction Layer Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Pellucid Applications CDG, Genoa, Italy Traffic Light Management MMBG, Sanlucar, Spain Project Management SADESI, Seville, Spain Telephone Incidence Resolution Bratislava, 12th January 2006

K-Wf Grid 6FP IST Project Title: Knowledge-based Workflow System for Grid Applications Objectives: To support workflow construction and execution with Knowledge Duration: Sep 2004 - Feb 2007 Work on new EMBET architecture Current state: User Assistant Agent in K-Wf Grid uses model presented in thesis. Algorithms presented in chapter 5 were reused with same improvements and modifications. Architecture is not Agent based but users of system are modeled as actors. Knowledge Model, its implementation and modified algorithms presented in thesis are used Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Conclusion and Future Work

Conclusion (1) The most significant scientific achievements Agent knowledge model Applicable in any discrete environment where actors need to be modeled Can be expressed by ontology, sets or description logic Such model was found useful for: Simple goal oriented agents Knowledge Management Solution based on Agents (Pellucid) Experience Management Solution non agent based (EMBET System) Development Methodology Speed up Knowledge based Agent development for concrete application domains Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Conclusion (2) The most significant development achievements Agent Library Support for OWL based Agent Knowledge Model Support for XML-RPC connection to receive event and send plain XML Support for Presentation of Ontological Knowledge (RDF/OWL => plain XML + XSL => HTML) Support for agent communication using FIPA ACL with OWL and RDQL as content languages JADE and Jena Integration Available on JADE official website to MAS community (August - December 2005 – 314 downloads) Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Conclusion (3) Extension of Work for Experience Management Projects Model Algorithms Projects Motivation for solving problems in real Application Evaluation of Thesis results Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Future work RAPORT APVT project (01/2005-12/2007): Research and development of a knowledge based system to support workflow management in organizations with administrative processes model and algorithms will be reused and extended K-Wf Grid EU 6FP RTD IST project (2004-2007) evaluation on more applications, improvement of context detection NAZOU SPVV Project (09/2004-11/2007): Tools for acquisition, organization and maintenance of knowledge in an environment of heterogeneous information resources OnTeA semantic annotation – not directly related but can be used for context detection Bratislava, 12th January 2006

Thank you ! Thank You for you attention Many Thanks to my supervisor Many Thanks to my colleagues Many Thanks to the Reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments and for reading my thesis